What is the greatest American rock band of all time? I suspect the answer might depend on from which side of the Atlantic you view the question.

From a British perspective, it wouldn't necessarily be America's biggest sellers, many of whom don't really have much purchase beyond their national borders, from the plush Seventies soft rock of Boston, Chicago, Kansas and Journey to the flashy Eighties hair metal of Motley Crue and perennial jam rock of the Grateful Dead. Even the most internationally successful American rock bands are often critically scorned in Britain, with superficial, showband aspects that see them dismissed as jumped-up pop acts, from glam rockers such as Kiss and Alice Cooper, to the overblown pomp of Meat Loaf, Bon Jovi and battle-scarred survivors Aerosmith.

A new documentary series on BBC 4, Born To Be Wild, offers an intriguing list of possible candidates for the title, with three episodes tracing how rock changed with the political temperature of the times. Subtitled The Golden Age of American Rock, the series proposes a compelling narrative that covers the origins of the modern genre in the revolutionary anti-establishment peace-and-love movement of the late '60s, its gradual transformation into an overblown, conformist, multi-million-selling corporate business in the '70s, and its reformation under the influence of MTV into the flashy, pseudo-rebellious, pantomime rock of the '80s.

Surely Fleetwood Mac deserves an inclusion.

Although the series concludes with the gritty disenchantment of early-Nineties grunge, its final episode posits Guns N' Roses as "the ultimate American band". Over shots of a scrawny Axl Rose gyrating with leonine threat to the metal groove of a band obscured by manes of shaggy hair, a voiceover explains that "they had the swagger, theatricality and arrogance of the big Seventies bands like Aerosmith and Alice Cooper, but mixed in with the sleaze and energy of punk and British hard rock. They existed in the mainstream alongside pop stars and power ballads but they were completely anti-establishment."

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Well it is true that Guns N' Roses sold 28 million copies worldwide of their 1987 debut, Appetite for Destruction (not the 50 million claimed in the programme), and I purchased one myself. But I look at all that flamboyant screeching, widdly guitar and sexist posturing and think: "Is that really the best a country of 300 million can do?"

I'm with Tom Petty, a rather more self-contained rock star, who drily remarks "that hair band stuff was just the absolute lowest point I'd ever seen rock get to. Kurt Cobain came and mowed them down like wheat before the sickle, and you saw what was left of those hair guys, trying to get into plaid shirts and looking a little less sprayed up because they were done for. And if that can happen to you then you're doing the wrong thing."

Bruce Springsteen has recently released his High Hopes album.

In terms of the major question, cases might be made, due to their sales and popularity, for the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac (three fifths of whose classic line-up was British). But, arguably, among global-superstar US rockers, only Jimi Hendrix, the Doors, Bruce Springsteen, REM, Metallica and Nirvana have the right combination of personal uniqueness, creative boldness, and popular and critical acclaim to be considered the greatest of all time.

Which is not to suggest that no one else counts. In Britain, we have long been fascinated by the underbelly of American rock. The list of our favourites runs from the poisonous drones of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground to the proto-punk of Iggy Pop and the Stooges, the MC5, the New York Dolls and Patti Smith; the new wave blasts of the Ramones, Television and Talking Heads; the fuzzy post-punk charge of Sonic Youth and the Pixies; and the industrial attack of Nine Inch Nails.

Indeed, you could argue that the real golden era of American rock belonged to the losers, bands that stood against the all-American ideal, those whose bloody-minded iconoclasm inspired others to pick up guitars and have a go. But the Velvet Underground aren't even mentioned once in a three-hour analysis that finds room for Styx, REO Speedwagon, Poison and Ratt.

The series is fascinating yet ruthlessly narrow-minded. There is no space in Born To Be Wild for REM, Metallica or the Red Hot Chili Peppers, counter-culture bands with enough popular appeal to suggest alternatives to this tale of revolution, consolidation, excess and decline.

There is, though, one American star too big for the film makers to ignore, who consistently undermines their tidy narrative: Bruce Springsteen. During the '70s, here deemed indulgent and escapist, Springsteen made Born To Run and Darkness On The Edge of Town, bittersweet epics of blue-collar life. In the '80s, when idealism was apparently obscured by hairspray, Springsteen made The River, Nebraska, Born In The USA and Tunnel Of Love.

Springsteen springs from the same rebellious counter-culture that gave birth to American rock in the Sixties. He revels in stars-and-stripes iconography but focuses on the nation's failings. As leading US music critic David Fricke notes, Born In The USA is "not patriotic, it's about a broken system". With a new album, High Hopes, out next week, Springsteen has spent more than four decades as a rock 'n' roll thorn in America's side and yet he is the fifth-biggest-selling US rock artist of all time (after Elvis Presley, the Eagles, Billy Joel and Aerosmith).

A charismatic live performer without compare, and backed by the phenomenal E Street Band, Springsteen would certainly top my list of the greatest American rock stars. For me, his creative longevity outweighs the claim for Jimi Hendrix, perhaps the most supernaturally gifted rocker of all time, and the Doors, who attempted to use rock's power as a spiritual battering ram to (as their Aldous Huxley-derived name suggests) break through the doors of perception. Hendrix and Doors frontman Jim Morrison were brilliant outsiders laid low too soon by indulgence. Had they lived, they would surely have been appalled by what followed in their wake.

Lamenting contemporary music, Vince Neil of Motley Crue proclaims "there's no rock stars any more", apparently upset by an absence of big hair and Spandex trousers. Tom Petty is convincing when he says: "I think the last seismic eruption in rock was the Nirvana period. Right after that, rock slips from the music of the day into the background. Hip hop is in the foreground now. Young people identify with that music, and rightfully so."

Yet if you want to find thrilling American rock, it's not difficult. Artists such as Jack White (in all his incarnations), Queens of the Stone Age, Foo Fighters, Green Day, the Strokes, the Killers and Kings Of Leon gleefully plunder the best of rock's past, whilst American-Canadian ensemble Arcade Fire push boldly into rock's future. Perhaps we should be glad the so-called golden age is over.

Born to Be Wild has yet to be scheduled Australia.

The Telegraph, London

Poll: From the extensive list of US rockers, which perfomer/band do you rate the best of all time?